Dropbox’s San Francisco HQ is promoting for a record-breaking $1.08 billion

This is a story that has been common at major technology companies in San Francisco for the past several months. First, a company announces a work-from-home strategy, followed by offloading office space in San Francisco. But this deal is a whopper.
According to the San Francisco Chronicle, Dropbox’s headquarters at Mission Bay headquarters – a complex of four buildings at 1800 Owens Street – is being sold for $ 1.08 billion.
The sale, which is expected to close before April, marks the second largest single property transaction in city history, falling only behind the $ 1.2 billion sale of the Embarcadero Center in 1998, a lot larger complex.
The 750,000-square-foot lot known as The Exchange will dump at around $ 1,440 per square foot, breaking the San Francisco price-per-square-foot record. The buyer is not yet known.
The amazing sale marks another big tech company pulling out of the San Francisco office space as working from home becomes the new normal. In October, Dropbox announced the office-to-home shift is permanent.
“We believe the data shows that the move to remote working, although abrupt, has been overall successful,” the company said in a blog post at the time. “… In our internal surveys, most employees say they can be productive at home (almost 90%) and don’t want to go back to a strict five-day work week in the office.”
In February it was announced that Uber was planning to unload much of the office space, also in Mission Bay, before it even moved in.
Salesforce, which employs over 9,000 people in the Bay Area, announced its “Work From Anywhere” strategy in February. It is estimated that more than 65% of employees will adopt the new system, based on a company survey.
In January, Digital Realty – a tech support company with approximately 1,500 employees worldwide – announced the move of its headquarters to Austin, Texas’ technology capital.
Yelp’s San Francisco headquarters at 140 New Montgomery Street is also available for rent. “As more employees work remotely, we are reducing some of our footprint in San Francisco, but we will continue to have our headquarters there,” said a statement from the crowd-sourced rating firm.
Last year, Pinterest, the social sharing website known for pinning recipes, home inspiration, and more, announced its $ 89.5 million office rental in San Francisco.
In another sector, Gap Inc. recently announced to its employees that it would be closing the Old Navy offices in Mission Bay and consolidating those employees into the parent company’s Embarcadero office building.
Dropbox didn’t respond to a request for comment at the time of posting.
(SFGATE and the San Francisco Chronicle are both owned by Hearst, but operate independently.)